The methodology we employ is based on conceptions, expressed with particular clarity and comprehensiveness by Okpewho, Houndtondji and Irele, which emphasise a need for creative approaches to the development of traditional African systems of thought.. Okpewho emphasises the need to transmute the predominantly oral forms of traditional African systems of thought into symbols so as to demonstrate their mythic essence. He argues that this transposition of form and meaning has become necessary on account of the need to make these systems accessible to a modern audience created by the distance between the modern sensibility and the imaginative and cognitive worlds within these traditions live8.
Hountondji elaborates upon the difficulties of actualising in a modern idiom the animating spirit, the inspirational essences of these traditions, and examines the difficulties involved in the need to explore them critically for the elements of contemporary value they embody9.
Irele suggests a means through which this transposition can take place in emphasizing the significance of a personal, imaginative appropriation of the oral tradition, so as to facilitate its transposition into a new idiom, in which its inspirational potential is actualised for an audience through the prism of the individual mind. The oral tradition would, therefore, be presented through a reinterpretation that attempts to communicate its significance as this is demonstrated to and through a particular consciousness10.
The application of the approach to oral traditions these scholars advocate would enable the realisation of the dynamic character of these traditions as cultural creations, which are capable of inspiring identification across time and space. In adapting these methodological orientations to our use, we demonstrate what Mudimbe describes as the capacity of myths to inspire responses that go beyond their original thematic orientations, “A careful student can always go beyond the formal systems, and unveil other symbolic networks, of which the members of the community might be absolutely unaware”.His elaborations on this conception resonate with the informing premises of this paper. He depicts myths as autonomous bodies open to retelling, reframing, reapplication and transformation11.
8 Isidore Okphewho, “Traditional and Modern Poetry in African Literature Today” in African Literature Today
9 Paulin Hountondji, “The Reasons for Scientific Dependence in Africa Today”Research in African Literatures,vol.21, no.3,Fall 1990,pp.5-15
10 Abiola Irele, The African Imagination Literature in Africa & the Black Diaspora ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
11 V.Y.Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge (London : James Currey; Bloomington : Indiana U.P., 1988).
Hountondji elaborates upon the difficulties of actualising in a modern idiom the animating spirit, the inspirational essences of these traditions, and examines the difficulties involved in the need to explore them critically for the elements of contemporary value they embody9.
Irele suggests a means through which this transposition can take place in emphasizing the significance of a personal, imaginative appropriation of the oral tradition, so as to facilitate its transposition into a new idiom, in which its inspirational potential is actualised for an audience through the prism of the individual mind. The oral tradition would, therefore, be presented through a reinterpretation that attempts to communicate its significance as this is demonstrated to and through a particular consciousness10.
The application of the approach to oral traditions these scholars advocate would enable the realisation of the dynamic character of these traditions as cultural creations, which are capable of inspiring identification across time and space. In adapting these methodological orientations to our use, we demonstrate what Mudimbe describes as the capacity of myths to inspire responses that go beyond their original thematic orientations, “A careful student can always go beyond the formal systems, and unveil other symbolic networks, of which the members of the community might be absolutely unaware”.His elaborations on this conception resonate with the informing premises of this paper. He depicts myths as autonomous bodies open to retelling, reframing, reapplication and transformation11.
8 Isidore Okphewho, “Traditional and Modern Poetry in African Literature Today” in African Literature Today
9 Paulin Hountondji, “The Reasons for Scientific Dependence in Africa Today”Research in African Literatures,vol.21, no.3,Fall 1990,pp.5-15
10 Abiola Irele, The African Imagination Literature in Africa & the Black Diaspora ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
11 V.Y.Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge (London : James Currey; Bloomington : Indiana U.P., 1988).
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